Thursday, July 24, 2008

Some Lingering Sentiments Expressed ...

Those posters with there revolutionary messages are back . Numerous posters today were found placed on any convenient surface bearing political messages expressing sentiments of real anger , violence and hate . Messages perhaps for now more innocent than otherwise but still displaying language that is in content literally threatening violence .

Though the posters were mostly posted on lamposts and other street hardware , we have been told that some were today spray painted also on the walls of the Christodora . We have been told that these painted messages expressed the same sentiments as the other numerous street posters . We did not see these graffittied Christodora messages but we did see three smeared and stained areas on the avenue B facing walls where it appeared that an attempt had been made to remove some sort of painted graffitti .

With all the wild and indifferent commercial developement activity afoot in the neighborhood displacing so many longtime residents ; with all the new commercial ventures that appropriate and display --usually ineptly and insensitively--"East Village" paraphernalia and themes displacing loved venerable local businesses ; with film and television production companies feasting off what remains of the neighborhood's very cultural substance it is not unreasonable to suspect that some are just fed-up and are venting by placing posters on lamposts and graffittiing icons that represent this seeminly irresistable juggernaut of commercial developement activity .

People have their different individual abilities to tolerate abuse and loss but eventually most do stand up and fight back against that which oppresses and denies all hope . Eventually they will be heard from and more . As societies evolve through time they seem to forget this and must be occasionally reminded ... in a variety of possible ways , some very real and impressive in moment and proportion .

Which all reminds us of an evening several years ago out on 4th street . On this evening while we were grinding the valves of our old and tired Fiat 1100 R a young man approached . He asked if we could hire him so that he could learn how to work on cars . We told him that we were only doing this work out in the street like this because we couldn't afford to pay someone to do it . We had no business in which he could work .

The young man lingered as we ground away and the conversation went on with us talking about all kinds of thing : the neighborhood and growing -up in it , money , jobs , bosses ,rich people etc. One comment--a bit of wisdom only learned by being a down-and-out nobody in the street--that he made still stands out all these years later : "sometimes you have to hit a man in the face and knock him down just to get him to acknowledge that you exist" .

"... We asked Ms. Friedlander if thepeople have a right to claim their communities as their own and to not have them developedout of existance [sic] by an elite group of wealthyand powerful individuals, corporations andeducational institutions [ AND the NYCHA withits "Project" used as an excuse/"justification"to vandalize "The {late} Garden of Eden" ]?She responded, "Yes, of course they do."

[ N.B., in the early 1980s, "they" did NOTinclude adam purple, who remembers her as a"govERRn{NON}me{a}ntal" LIAR; and he told herthat word every timeternity he saw her after her perjury before late Federal {mis}JudgeVincent Broderick in mid-August 1985. ]